Sunday, April 03, 2016

The Accessible Psychiatry Project, Updated & Please Do Comment on the Scattergood Site


Later this month, Shrink Rap will be celebrating it's 10th anniversary!  More later, but we are the longest running psychiatry blog, and we're looking forward to the cake.

As you may know, Shrink Rap is part of a larger group of projects that the three of us, in various combinations, work on.  The list has morphed over the years, and the Accessible Psychiatry Project is now up for a Scattergood Innovation Award.  The nominations closed last week, and public comment is not being requested.  We'd love to have our Shrink Rap readers visit the Scattergood site and leave an encouraging comment.  The Scattergood site is here and comments can be added at the end of The Accessible Psychiatry Project's description: 
http://www.scattergoodfoundation.org/innovideas/accessible-psychiatry-project#.VwGidHB4EWg
If you do add a comment, please accept our thanks.  

For a recap of our projects over time:


The Accessible Psychiatry Project








The Accessible Psychiatry Project
Encouraging dialogue about psychiatry across media.
--Steven R. Daviss, M.D.­­
--Annette Hanson, M.D.
--Dinah Miller, M.D.

Mission Statement:
The Accessible Psychiatry Project strives to encourage dialogue about psychiatric disorders and their treatment in order to explore issues of controversy and misunderstanding in our field. Through open dialogue, in both new media and print, we hope to foster discussion about the work psychiatrists do, and to decrease stigma associated with the treatment of mental disorders.

Components of The Accessible Psychiatry Project include:

Shrink Rap: The longest running psychiatry blog 

on the Internet, since April, 2006


Shrink Rap News: A blog and print column for 

Clinical Psychiatry News


Shrink Rap Today: A collateral blog on the 

Psychology Today Website. 


My Three Shrinks podcast;
 

November, 2006- 2012,  70 episodes aired

Featured on the iTunes Medical Podcasts Webpage


ShrinkRapRoy tweets about psychiatry and health care.
  • HITshrink tweets about health information technology and health care reform (HITshrink's blog is here).

ClinkShrink tweets about issues pertaining to psychiatry & the law; sometimes about birds

ShrinkRapDinah tweets mostly on mental health issues.

Access to Care: MarylandPsychiatrists.Net  is a website designed to facilitate quick entry to outpatient care.

Find us on Facebook at ShrinkRapBook : http://www.facebook.com/shrinkrapbook.


Books:
Committed: The Battle Over Involuntary Psychiatric Care, by Dinah Miller and Annette Hanson, In Press, Johns Hopkins University Press for Fall, 2016.

Shrink Rap: Three Psychiatrists Explain Their Work, by Dinah Miller, Annette Hanson, and Steven Roy Daviss,  Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2011. 



The Shrink Rappers give talks on: 
~ The Public Face of Psychiatry Across Media
~Access to Care
~Psychiatry and Technology (Dr. Daviss)
~Forensic Psychiatry (Dr. Hanson)
~soon: Involuntary/Forced Psychiatric Care
~soon: Mental Illness, Violence, and Violence Prevention

3 comments:

Joel Hassman, MD said...

I've read this post a couple of times, and I'm really trying to be as gracious and respectful as I can without being banned for the rest of my life from your site. That's said, to ask people to comment to see if you can get an award really is lame.

In my humble and limited opinion, blogs about mental health are not about Awards and Kudos at the end of the day.

Honestly, I am a bit stunned to read this post.

Anyway, I hope it's worth getting this kind of recognition where you might equally alienate some people who up til now came to this site seeking the information and advocacy that really is needed.

There are too many people who are blind to the honest truth that Psychiatry does offer genuinely and appropriately healthy and long lasting benefits to the public.

I really worry this blog post could do some damage. Maybe I'm missing something here, but, personal reward doesn't help fight off the anti Psychiatry attitudes.

Frankly, this is why some people really need to stop and realize why are you on the internet, are you doing it to help others, or just to gain some personal rewards?!

If you wish to come at me personally outside your blog, you can come to my site and make a comment where I will respect your personal email and we can discuss this further outside the blogs or just part ways if you think this comment is over the top.

My instinct is that Shrink Rap does not care about my personal opinion anyway, but, I think I might strike a chord in some other readers, so we'll see if they agree or not. Hey, I've been wrong before, so, I'm ready to take that risk again.

Good luck in your pursuits, honestly. And if this is my last post here, again, thank you for the opportunity to make a comment and it be printed.

And, I guess, preliminary congratulations should you win this award...

Dinah said...

Joel,
Your comments are fine, totally understandable. Let me elaborate on why we'd like this award.
For 10 years, we've been doing these projects, we love it (at least I do) but there's no money in most of it (I'll give the exceptions in a moment) and it's time lost that could be used making money, so it costs, plus we've chosen to personally fund aspects of this. The exceptions: we've made a token on the books, an embarrassingly little amount that doesn't begin to compensate for the time, even if we used minimum wage and not doctor pay as the scale. The forthcoming book was quite an endeavor -- more journalism and hands on than psychiatry -- and involved travel and I had to cut back on my practice to do it; I'd like to see the book do well. We do get paid by CPN for our columns, but all else is uncompensated and self-funded and it would be nice to have some funding to boost some of our endeavors (see below)

Books are about getting them publicized, not easy to do, and I'm hoping that recognition as innovators will help that cause. Secondly, the other project I have been working on is the Access to Care website -- MarylandPsychiatrists.Net. It's a free site for both patients and docs to let people know who has availability quickly. Given the access problems people have finding psychiatrists, I think that's a worthwhile cause, but so far, it seems very few people know it's there to use it.

So, it would be nice to have some recognition to bring attention and readership to our social media causes, to spread the message of our forthcoming book, and to have some funds to help publicize and improve the Access to Care website, and to use for future projects. There are some terrific projects nominated (most with their own funding), so we aren't holding our collective breath here. Nothing about this feels wrong. The Scattergood Foundation would like the word of their mission spread, so I posted here and on Twitter.

Joel Hassman, MD said...

Thanks for the clarification, hope the pursuit is worth the risks.

But should you do it at your blog? I don't know, just advising other venues that might minimize any misinterpretations.

At the end of the day, it's not about the press, but, just doing your best, and maybe karma once in a while will let you know you make or made a difference in a humbling and subtle flattering way.

Just my imperfect opinion...